These are the over-sized lifeguard (?) chairs I was talking about in the previous post.
venice beach
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I was riding towards the Santa Monica pier on the bike path when I heard this odd sound, almost a cross between a whistle and a moan. It took me a bit of time to figure where it was coming from, time spent wondering if I was going crazy, until I got closer to a pair of structures set out on the beach some distance. I had made note of these on a few trips past as they are best described over-sized life-guard stands. Much like the chair Lily Tomlin used in her bit as Edith Ann on Laugh-In.
Turns out the backing of these chairs are pipes that reverberate when the wind blows through them. A cool if not subtle and slightly haunting sound if you haven’t had your morning fix of jones yet.
Get your minds out of the gutter. I’m talking about those images we take, that for some irrational reason, delight us, the creators, so.
A good portion of my trip to California was spent hanging with a dear friend at his home in Venice Beach. A few blocks from the beach, it was my opportunity to rise each morning, grab the beach cruiser (bicycle for those of you outside the flip-flop set) and with Holga in hand spend the better part of my mornings riding up and down the boardwalk in search of coffee and snap shots.
Independent from these images and the time spent with good people, the thing about this trip I will remember a few years down the road, will be the light. Pastoral is the best way to describe it. Or maybe pastorally atmospheric. Are those mutually exclusive? Can you have one without the other? It was the kind of light that you’d expect if the sun was a giant ball of lemon salt-water taffy. Still in the wrapper.
But the image, it has to be about the image right? And this one pleases me to no end. Maybe there isn’t a way for me to remove it from the experience and that the taste of salt in the air and the warm friction of sand twixt the toes has as much to do with me loving this photo as anything else, and without those imprints this picture is nothing more than a split second exercise in base image making.
Or then again maybe that’s why I dig it as much as I do.
